Are the Scouts a Paramilitary Organization?

One of my favourite propaganda Hollywood films of the Reagan era is Red Dawn (1984) directed by John Milius. The film is about a group of high school students-- including Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson, Jennifer Grey, and C. Thomas Howell-- who by resorting to guerrilla warfare help to repel an invasion of the United States by the Soviet Union and Cuba.

Anyhow, one the most memorable scenes in the film involves a Cuban colonel questioning the mayor of a town about the activities of the mayor's son who has been identified as a 'student leader'. In the course of the questioning, the Cuban refers to the 'Eagle Scout' organization that the mayor's son belongs to--a fictionalized facsimile of the Boy Scouts--as an elite paramilitary organization. And of course, this dialogue serves as both a joke and a warning: the joke is that the audience is supposed to believe that the Cuban colonel is way off in his analysis of the 'Eagle Scouts'. The implicit warning is that if one embraces the totalitarianism that the film wishes to pin onto these fictionalized communist regimes, you too will begin to see and live in a world where such an analysis makes sense.

According to a story by Jennifer Steinhauer in the New York Times, the dialogue in Red Dawn is actually prescient:

• The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters...The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout (NYT 13 May, 2009).

Fiction has now become fact. This makes one wonder about how one can best classify a society in which processes of militarism and securitization filter all the way down to training kids to hunt illegal immigrants and eliminate suspected terrorists? Red Dawn provides some very uncomfortable answers to that question.

Comments

[Mike Hough]

Jennifer Steinhauer is off base here. Sure the scouting experience carries some military-like themes - there are ranks, and a salute and so on, but nothing that would resemble serious military training.

The notion that scouts will begin fighting terrorist on any serious level is ludicrous.

The Beaver motto is "sharing, sharing, sharing" for crying out loud.

[Kyle]

Beavers certainly differs from what is being talked about here. The Explorer Program explicitly includes instruction on how to conduct drug raids, detain migrants, and identify terrorists. Add the provision of air rifles--which according to the article is a big attraction--and the dividing line between this kind of exercise and military/security training becomes very opaque. Thus, I'd reverse the burden of proof and ask the question: 'why shouldn't this be considered paramilitary activity?' How does it differ really?